Using wildcards to work around GDAL character limit

Question

I am attempting to use the 'Merge' & 'Create VRT' tools in QGIS 2.0 on a folder with 3000+ raster tiles in.

However whenever I try to perform this operation the following error appears:

The process failed to start. Either the invoked program is missing, or you may have insufficient permissions to invoke the program.

The process works when I select only a few tiles, so I can only assume it's due to a character restriction due to the number of files?

Upon searching the website for a solution I came across the concept of using 'Wildcards' to get around this problem:

However I cannot find any clear explanation on how to use them, and I don't have much experience with using OSGeo4W outside of the QGIS GUI.

you can launch the OSGeo4W command prompt to execute your gdal command lines. Probably better than using gdal through the QGIS GUI for "large projects" — radouxju, Jan 15, 2014 at 10:13
Any pointers on how to use the OSGeo4W command prompt? For example could you post a simple example of creating a VRT? — Canningmister, Jan 15, 2014 at 13:13
for example : gdalbuildvrt doq_index.vrt doq/*.tif and if you type gdalbuildvrt alone, you should get the help. — radouxju, Jan 15, 2014 at 13:32

user10353user10353 · Accepted Answer · 2014-01-15 16:33:43Z

5

Create an input file list using a text editor (just one input filename per line), and use -input_file_list:

gdalbuildvrt -input_file_list mylist.txt my.vrt

This allows any number of input files. You should be able to get to gdals command line tools by opening an osgeo4w shell from the start menu.

answered Jan 15, 2014 at 16:33

user10353

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